1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a label printer.
2. Description of the Related Art
Bar codes have been widely used for administration of sales items. The bar code has white and black bars arranged to express the manufacture of the sales item, the item code and the like. The bar code is sometime printed directly on the item, but in general, it is printed on a label and then the label is attached on the item. The label may be provided in the form of a seal or tag. The seal is often used for items such as fresh foods, and the tag is often used for items such as clothing. Further, the bar code label is used to show information such as the name of article and the price in addition to the bar code.
The bar code label is issued when necessary by use of a label printer installed in a store. A typical label printer is so designed as to display, on a CRT display, printing data such as message data and bar code data entered by the key operation on a keyboard, and issue a label on which the printing data is printed in a preset printing format. In this case, the layout on the bar code label, or the printing positions of the message and bar code and the form of the bar code are determined according to the printing format.
The layout of the bar code label greatly differs depending on the field of items dealt with by the users of the label printer. Therefore, the following two types of label printers have been developed in which a desired one of various printing formats can be selectively used, for example. The first type of label printer includes a ROM storing various printing formats, and the second type of label printer includes a ROM storing a format forming program which can be used to form various printing formats.
However, the above label printers are not suitable when they are used by many operators dealing with different fields of items or articles in large scale stores such as department stores. That is, it becomes necessary to increase the memory capacity of the ROM in order to increase the number of selectable printing formats in the first type label printer. In this case, the manufacturing cost will increase with increase in the versatility of the label printer. The memory capacity of the ROM in the second type label printer which is required to prepare a preset number of printing formats may be set smaller than that in the first type label printer. However, it is necessary to modify the format forming program for each store. The modification of the format forming program is relatively complicated, increasing the manufacturing cost as well as in the first type label printer.